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Celebrations: Maya & Baby's Tea for Two

Monday, August 08, 2016

Maya & Baby's Tea for Two#LittleBabyEichnerSo, it's not like this happened yesterday, seeing as Maya's baby (Addison Joy), is about to turn three months old. Nevertheless, I feel like her baby shower deserves a some publicity! It was tea party themed, but we wanted it to feel like a real tea party rather than a cheesy themed party (if that makes any sense at all). It took a lot of hard work, but I think we threw one of the cutest baby showers of all time!Here's a little photo diary of the event, followed by some things that I think you just need to know!

Here are some things you need to know!

1) Color scheme: Mint, coral, pink.

2) Prep time: It took us a little over one month of nonstop planning/collecting supplies. I mean literally every day during the month before the party was devoted to baby shower planning! (PS: I wasn't working at the time, this made things a tad bit easier.)

3) Budget: We worked really hard to keep the cost as low as possible. This included DIYing as much as we possibly could, but doing it in a tasteful way! We estimated that the shower costed between $500-600 for the venue, decorations, food, and drink.4) Venue & Guest Count: We kept it local! The venue was the Hickory Inn in South Milwaukee. Just a typical banquet space connected to a bar that is available for parties. We've held many a party here throughout the years. They don't have very many rules (besides that you have to buy alcohol from them if you provide any, which we did not) and are very accommodating and affordable! They provide tables and chairs. Our number of guests was between 80-90. We were prepared for 100 just in case.5) Decor: Seriously, everything from the invites to the decor was made by us! We repurposed sets of teacups and saucers (from Goodwill and other thrift stores) to be little flower pot centerpieces. Flowers and Spanish moss were from Hobby Lobby (they always have sales, and if not, always use a 40% off on the app). For a lot of our paper goods, we used a Cricut to cut out shapes and letters from scrapbook paper. Tassel garland was made with tissue paper by hand. We made our own place mats out of 11x17" paper, a Martha Stewart paper punch, and a stamp roller. Any calligraphy/watercolor art was done by yours truly! That includes the watercolor art on the invitations. We ordered balloons and paper lanterns to match our color scheme, had grand ideas for both of those things, but didn't quite have time to carry them out! Dessert stands, drink carafes, chalkboards, photo frames were literally all things we already had or borrowed!6) Food & Drink: For food, we stuck to a post-lunch dessert bar. An EPIC dessert bar. This included, cookies, dessert shooters, bars, eclairs, cake, white chocolate popcorn, and tons of other delicious treats. Luckily, we happen to be cookie decorating experts. That means we were able to make 100 teacup/teapot shaped decorated sugar cookies ourselves for a very low cost. Same goes for the cake. Our aunt makes cakes, so we asked her to make a very simple mint colored marble cake which we topped with a mini tea set! We made black forest, strawberry shortcake, and margarita dessert shooters. Those are a super simple way to make a dessert that looks and tastes super decadent! I learned how to make flavored meringues from the Meringue Girls cookbook, so I decided to make some green tea and some chai flavored! Those are also a super easy treat that looks fancy and expensive. I also made cookies and cream macarons, but only about two dozen because I find them painstakingly difficult to make in large quantities! Although I do love everything about them once they are finished. We had various other tea party themed desserts, many which were donated by family who attended the party! A few vegan desserts were provided as well. In general, we tried to stick to finger food, just because we wanted to keep it simple. For everyone who offered to bring a dessert, we tried to convey this message. For drinks, our main offerings were coffee, tea (hot and iced), and punch.7) Games: We gathered ideas for games/activities either from Pinterest or other showers we had attended. None of us are huge fans of forced games, so we chose ones that were completely optional. Word searches, photo booth for an Instagram hashtag contest (you had to dress up and create the funniest "family"), a guessing game (candy in a giant baby bottle), a diaper raffle (bring a pack of diapers, be entered to win a prize), dirty diaper game (those who opened a dirty diaper win a prize), and draw the baby (put a paper plate on your head and the one who draws the best baby without looking wins the prize). For prizes, plenty of $15 gift cards (about 10 of them) to really good places! We felt like fewer prizes that were more desirable was the way to go.8) Photography: Moi ;) so $0. In hindsight, I don't recommend being the photographer of the party you are trying to throw, #stress. Not that I wouldn't do it again the same way...9) Improvements for next time: We all agreed that we did the right amount of prep beforehand, but we did not have enough time to set it all up at the venue! We had plenty more decorations that didn't get put up in time for the party. The venue was rented hourly, so if we were to do it again, we would have splurged and given ourselves more time to set it all up. We only had about 1.5/2ish hours, so next time we would need at least 3.5!10) Other things we did well: Besides the fact that we threw an awesome baby shower! We arranged a talented team to help with set-up! They all arrived at the venue when we did and we couldn't have done it without them! Also, Maya's dad, brother, & his best friend were our muscles for the day.In the end, everything came together almost perfectly! It was an amazing party and I look forward to planning more in the future.

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I am just drooling over that party food and I am simply in love with that party cake. It is really wonderful that you planned this great party. I also want to have a party at LA venue but I am not sure about food, so please help me with that as well.